Russian models play Instagram prank for internet access

Rose Powell

When three Russian Instagram celebrities posted pictures with sexy hashtags, their followers frantically clicked on the images.

Victoria Bonya, Anna Sedokova and Alena Vodonaeva uploaded pictures adorned with hashtags such as #sexy, #oiled and #myself onto the popular photo sharing community .

Their followers increased rapidly, while the comments section beneath each picture exploded - but mostly from frustrated fans desperately trying to load each photo.

In fact the picture had already loaded. Despite hashtags used by the models, including #experimenting #crazy #positions #wow #amazing #ohmygod, the images were only of Instagram's loading screen.

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The lascivious campaign was in fact a collaboration between the models, their modelling agency and a Russian telecom company. They had teamed up to promote the company's recently released 4G internet service.

Sedokova and Vodonaeva have close to half a million followers each, and Bonya has almost a million.

Duped followers were furious when they realised the pictures were inaccurately hashtagged on purpose, clogging the comments beneath the images with even more laments and frustration.

In what was an attempt to attract a different group of followers such as animal enthusiasts, several of the pictures were also tagged #withanimals #cat #bear #horse.